More practice with takeoffs and approaches today. We flew to a nearby uncontrolled airport (KDEW) to practice. My turns today were very good. I was maintaining my airspeed through the turn within about 4 knots. I was just starting to get the hang of setting up my descent rate when we had to head back to KSFF to stay within our fuel reserve guidelines. My school requires us to be on the ground at KSFF with no less than 1/4 tank of fuel.

What Not To Do In the Traffic Pattern

There were several other fixed wing aircraft in the pattern today doing touch and gos. It kept the radio traffic lively.

One idiot flew a cool red biplane. On our final approach of the day, we radioed that we were turning on to base leg. The biplane immediately radioed that he was turning on to base. We looked for the traffic, but didn’t see him. Then we radioed that we were turning on to approach and he immediately did the same. We looked out just in time to see him barreling at us from about 9 o’clock headed for the runway! We turned sharply to the right to avoid a collision.

We watched him make a banzai run down to the grassy area between runways and do a high speed fly by over a group of people. What a dumb ass! Wonder if we’ll be reading about him in an NTSB report sometime soon?

Direct To The Ramp

One of the perks of flying helicopters is that we don’t have to use a runway. For the first time today we requested a direct approach to the ramp instead of the runway. Sweet!

My instructor told me to set up a normal approach. Instead of using the runway numbers as my target, I used the landing pads. I took the picture above as we were crossing the runways. The pads are just to the right of the control tower.

Almost forgot, on the way back to KSFF, we saw a pair of bald eagles soaring over the river about 1500 feet below us. What a cool sight!!

Total Hours To Date: 6.5 Total Training Cost To Date: $2437.50 Total Books, Supplies, and Tuition To Date: $2109.48